HappySqurriel said:
Isn't grabbing one bullet point from one preview a fairly excellent example of cherry picking? Why didn't you post the entire preview? Although the version of Lair shown at a Sony San Diego press event this week was almost no different from the one demonstrated a few weeks earlier, it gave certain editors who weren't at that event a chance to play the most recent version of the game. You know, such as me. According to Sony, the differences between what was shown before and what was playable yesterday were primarily in terms of optimization -- the framerate had been improved in some areas, some minor bugs had been addressed, and so on. This is really indicative of where Lair, as a whole, is at the moment: it's essentially finished. At this point, the team is pretty much focused on optimizing and polishing for the game's summer release. Much has already been said about how the game plays, so after spending some hands-on time with the near final five playable levels -- about a third of the game -- I'm left with two main thoughts: #1 -- Playing Lair, one word really comes to mind: Epic. Seriously, the experience of flying through these stunning, expansive landscapes with tons going on all around you and a fantastic orchestral score playing underneath is really quite something. You've simply not experienced anything like this before -- certainly not on this scale. The lighting and weather effects (lightning and rain were specifically impressive), the draw distance (you can see for miles and miles), the amount of on screen action at times (tons of other dragons flying through the air, ships in the sea, and warriors on the ground), and the ability to simply and seamlessly switch between fighting high in the sky and down on the ground -- this is absolutely a next generation experience. #2 -- There is one major worry and it's perhaps a damning one: the Sixaxis controls. At times, the Sixaxis seems fantastic for a game like this -- controlling the dragon's giant swoops seems perfectly suited for motion sensing controls. At others, it feels clunky as all hell. Trying to bash another dragon in close range combat took me out of the experience right away -- I felt like I was fighting the controls. More often than not, I couldn't help but wonder how much more I'd be enjoying the game were I just using standard controls. Now, perhaps the controls will improve with more familiarity, but this is certainly a concern shared by many others who played the game today and in the past. Factor 5 has about a month left to finish tweaking the game. Here's hoping our concerns with the controls are either addressed or alleviated by its release, as a game this epic really deserves to be played.
As you can see it is mostly positive ...
I can't recall a single previewer saying Lair was an unplayable mess because of its controlls, in many/most cases they focused entirely on the positives and said nothing (and those that did comment said something along the lines of "It could be tweaked"), and yet there were constant references to how unplayable Lair was when it came to review time. Most of the time previews are amazingly soft on games, and it is impossible to determine whether one of their complaints is a minor issue that should/will be fixed by the time the game releases or if it is a major issue that should delay the release of a game. Even then, most games do not get much in the way of negative comments if they are headed for an aggregate review score of over 70%. |
most previews are entirely positive, but the one quoted was half negative. Hum...makes ya think, doesn't it? Oh, I guess not. again, you compare KZ2 to Lair and Haze for no good reason. it's not near the same situation, but I already pointed that out in my post above.
